As happens a few times every winter, Monday afternoon I found myself laying flat on my back in the middle of a crowded walkway, trying to think how best to save face.
Aha!"" I'd say, leaping gracefully to my feet. ""I thought you might all enjoy that. Now back to my duties as Secretary General of the United Nations.""
With no good excuse, I'd fallen down in front of a crowd of people. But it wasn't just any fall. When I hit the patch of ice on the Park Street pedestrian bridge my right leg shot over my head as my body began to rotate backwards in mid air like an acrobatically challenged Pele. By the time I hit the ground I was halfway to upside down, having spent just long enough in the air to flail my arms helplessly and shout ""No!"" in a way that would have been more appropriately dramatic if I were falling from, say, the Golden Gate Bridge rather than on my ass.
Even though I appeared foolish, I was having mixed feelings about my icy tumble. My lumbar hurt, as did my sense of pride, but I could still appreciate how it must have looked to anyone with a good viewing angle. This kind of everyday slapstick is even older than the pie toss and is one of the chief compensations for sub-freezing temps. People fall down all year round but it's rarely so funny as in the winter, when slippery conditions ensure plenty of pratfalls while snow cover helps to prevent most injuries from becoming life-threateningly unfunny.
Someone falling to his death is tragic. Someone trying to brave an unshoveled flight of stairs and rolling all the way down in an ignominious heap, on the other hand, is the kind of occasion where you dial up the last six callers on your cell phone so your friends can all laugh at a stranger too. It's mean, but it's sadism-lite at worst and any lingering feelings of guilt are usually lessened by whatever bad decisions preceded their tumble.
Once the first snowfall of winter has melted and refrozen into a treacherous sheet of permafrost, observing these falls takes on the character of a spectator sport. A savvy fan can move between hotspots on campus as facilities management wages a losing battle against nature - white flakes of road salt and shovels are only placebos against 32 degrees Fahrenheit.
The first stop on the campus slip-and-slide tour is the footbridge connecting Witte to Gordon Commons. Even in dry weather, the bridge is an ergonomic nightmare, a smooth surface sloping downward to a staircase so steep it's practically a ladder. After heavy snowfall, the most enthusiastically cruel can gather in their dorm lounges with mugs of hot chocolate and watch people pile up like at the bottom of a waterslide.
Moving on from the Southeast end of campus, one might take in the sloping, snow-covered lawns of Bascom Hill. If there's been freezing rain recently, pause for a moment to watch pedestrians slide helplessly backward while they struggle toward the top of Bascom for jobs and classes.
Lying in a slush puddle above Park Street, I made a mental note to add the pedestrian bridge to this list. The surface is abnormally smooth, it sees plenty of foot traffic. The slope is deceptively steep. Or so I tell myself to raise my morale. Sometimes self-esteem is all you've got. Particularly when you've just fallen on your iPod.
Matt's fallen and he can't get up, help him by e-mailing him at hunziker@wisc.edu.
